Government/Military

[Satellite News 07-05-11] RapidEye CEO Wolfgang Biedermann filed for Germany’s equivalent of Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last month after its financial sponsors felt the privately owned imagery firm’s overall debt was too high for the current business, undercutting hopes that commercial demand, alone, could sustain an earth observation company, according to satellite industry analysts.   ...

[Satellite TODAY 07-04-11] The European Space Agency (ESA) has recovered a four-satellite Cluster mission from near loss by using “an unorthodox, dirty hack,” the agency announced July 1.    The four Cluster satellites were launched in 2000 and were orbiting Earth in a tight formation until last March when the Cluster’s number 3 satellite, Samba,...

[Satellite TODAY 07-04-11] GTX Corp., a real-time, two-way GPS tracking and personal location services provider, has crossed the 1 million-download milestone mark for its GPS Tracking Apps through Apple and Android app stores, GTX announced July 1.             GTX said the increased demand for the two-way GPS tracking application was driven by several factors including:...

  Cisco’s Internet Router in Space (IRIS) initiative and hosted payloads have been big discussions in recent years, particularly in terms of how they could shape future government and military strategies. The question now is what happens next, and will they transform certain parts of the space business? On May 7, a United Launch Alliance...

In this day and age, with so much emphasis on cutting costs and debt reduction, the mantra is to do more with less. The satellite industry is no exception. With technology advances, small satellites suddenly look a whole lot more attractive on a number of levels. Small satellites — from tiny pico and CubeSats to...

On April 12, 1961, Russian Yuri Gagarin made the first human flight into space. His Vostok spacecraft completed one earth orbit, and was followed in May 1961 by the suborbital flight of Alan Shepard, the first American in space, aboard his Mercury spacecraft, Freedom 7. The 50th anniversaries of the two flights this spring provides...

[Satellite TODAY 07-01-11] Orbital Sciences’ Minotaur 1 rocket successfully launched the U.S. Department of Defense’s ORS-1 satellite from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) launch facility at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility, Orbital announced June 30.    Following the flight of the four-stage Minotaur rocket, the ORS-1 spacecraft was deployed into its intended orbit. The mission was the...

[Satellite TODAY 07-01-11] Lockheed Martin is two weeks ahead of its production schedule for the GeoEye-2 next-generation imaging satellite it is building for Dulles, Va.-based imagery provider GeoEye, Lockheed announced June 30.    The manufacturer said it has completed a round of critical design reviews, which accelerates the GeoEye-2 program into its production cycle. The...

 [Satellite TODAY Insider 06-30-11] Raytheon’s Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System team has successfully tripled the bandwidth on the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association’s (NOAA) Satellite Broadcast Network (SBN) enabling the network to serve more than 130 weather forecast offices and river forecast centers, Raytheon announced June 29.    The SBN is the primary vehicle through...

 [Satellite TODAY 06-30-11] Al Yah Satellite Communications Co. (YahSat) has completed a demonstration for the space and ground segments of its YahSecure government Ka-band service and is now ready to start providing secure satellite communications capacity to defense and government entities in the Middle East, Africa, Europe and Asia regions, the operator announced June 29....